FOXF2 differentially regulates expression of metabolic genes in non-cancerous and cancerous breast epithelial cells.

Forkhead box F2 (FOXF2) functions as a transcription factor and is critically involved in programming organogenesis and regulating epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cell proliferation. We recently have revealed that FOXF2 can exert distinct functional effects on different molecular subtypes of breast cancer. We found that FOXF2 expression is epigenetically silenced in luminal breast cancers due to its tumor-suppressive role in DNA replication regulation. In contrast, FOXF2 is overexpressed in basal-like triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) due to its oncogenic role in promoting EMT. Although our and other studies have shown that FOXF2 dysregulation is critical for tumorigenesis of various tissue types, the role of FOXF2 in metabolic rewiring of cancer remains unknown. In this study, we analyzed our previous microarray data to understand the metabolic role of FOXF2 in non-cancerous and cancerous breast epithelial cells. Our studies showed that in non-cancerous breast epithelial cells FOXF2 can also play a dual role either in tumor suppression or in tumor promotion through regulating expression of tumor-suppressive and oncogenic metabolic genes. Furthermore, we found that FOXF2-regulated metabolic genes are not conserved between non-cancerous and cancerous breast epithelial cells and FOXF2 is involved in metabolic rewiring in breast cancer cells. This is the first report to explore the metabolic function of FOXF2 in breast cancer.